On January 15, 2024, I started writing End of Days, and it has turned into quite a fun romp. At the beginning, I thought it would be my fifth novella, but it is now plain that instead it will become my tenth novel. Hardly my first time: I thought Hope’s Choice and The Fourth Emissary would be novellas also.
The story began for me on February 26, 2023, while editing in “The Secrets of Fynydov” and listening to some Max Richter compositions that fit the mood. I was blessed with a powerful vision that provided both the beginning and end of the story.
I never thought I would write an extended account covering the last months before the fall of Oversea, or enjoy diving into a longer work where all the characters are avarii. That has brought its own thrills and challenges, beyond a different calendar and system of measurement and how to gesture at a base fourteen additive numeric system while remaining readable. These avarii, who have never met humans or hyarmi, don’t think in terms of hierarchies or have any need to imagine that type of society. Their names for the sacred spirits are different, for they don’t have terms like queen or lord. They have no concept of money and no word in their language for an army; the closest I’ve gotten so far is swarm.
When I wrote “One Shining Day” in 2005, the brief appearance of Archivist Tranquil Pool delighted me, but I never guessed I would get to write a much longer work in which he plays a part. It’s also tremendous fun to write scenes with Fiery Sunset, aka the Master Shapechanger Fynydov, from such a different perspective than in “Embers Fade to Ash,” “Encounters,” or “One Shining Day.” Nor did I expect I would ever write a piece set during the eleven-month span in the fledgling Defender’s life between the loss of his father and the loss of everyone else.
My greatest challenge in even starting this story lay with the protagonist. A shapechanger who hates changing shape; an ava who often lives a nocturnal life due to his physical disability. Spending time with Night Wind and Mountain Frost in Dark Wings Over Triune was very different than the perspective of somebody with such constraints and the innovations he developed to attain a functional life.
The biggest bombshell for me was finding out about an avarii Messenger. Because the Defender was kept ignorant of so much that was happening in those last months, what I learned from him through writing Hope’s Choice has proven quite incomplete. Second biggest surprise: I get to write more about the ultimate origins of the Subverted. I didn’t expect that would be described in any story.
If not for embarking on this story, I might never have discovered the fantastic Stellarium software or bought myself an atlas of great comets for bedtime reading pleasure, since comets have turned out to play such a key role in the novel. When I chose which “real-world” year to link my hyarmi calendar to back in the 1990s, I based my selection upon my limited resources at that time, before there was much of an internet. I never conceived how that would impact certain astronomical events in my Geren novels, or in The Fourth Emissary with the tetrad, four consecutive lunar eclipses. I certainly did not foresee how key to the plot this would become in End of Days, written over twenty-five years later. I’m so thankful to God for these wonderful gifts!
